Broken Water Main

I woke up yesterday morning, came down to my office and opened my blinds. There was a big hill in my front yard where there had not been a hill before. (Stupid me forgot to take pictures...) There was water running down the sidewalk and at 1st I thought, "Is it warm enough out there for the snow to be melting THAT fast?" I then proceeded to the front door and opened it. There was water SPURTING from the small hill in my yard...a water main had busted! So needless to say the rest of the day was spent fixing this problem. It took about an hour to figure out how to keep the water from continuosly flowing into the hole where the main water valve was hiding. Then Jordan, Chris and our awesome neighbor Russ Lee helped pull back our grass (much harder than it sounds) and dig up about a 3x6 area of yard...and about 4 feet deep. They finally found the problem. It was a small problem at a joint....causing a BIG problem in our yard...and our house. We had no flooding in the house but since the water was off we had no running water. (I managed to clean the kitchen and a bunch of dishes with no running water...thank goodness for water storage!) Back to the problem outside...Russ was nice enough to run to Home Depot and Lowes looking for the part that broke. They didn't carry it. Chris called a local plumber and the guy was nice enough to meet Chris at his shop and sell him the part. All-in-all it cost $20 to repair the problem and we have running water again! Oh, and a big hole in our yard to Chris fixes that... =)